By real estate do you mean being a landlord - collecting rent, arranging repairs, and finding new tenants? Might want to weigh those against REITs that invest similarly, but with more diversification.
I am more interested in owibg actual property and landlording. though I am not opposed to REIT's too though I know nothing about them. I am not interested in development real estate.
We have already done all the typical index fund and other securities investments and have a large surplus of cash we are looking to invest with.
I see a lot of variation in index fund investing. Could you give more details about your allocation, even in rough fractions? (for example: 1/3rd U.S. total stock, 1/3rd international, 1/3rd total bond market)
Our current allocations (per personal capital) are roughly:
70% u.s. stocks
15% foreign stock
4% foreign bonds
5% u.s. bonds
2% alternatives
3% metals (on hand)
2% cash
These holding are about 50/50 in retirement accounts and taxable. Most of the u.s. stock is in vanguard admiral though I have a large individual position in Apple, Nvidia, Agilent (and spin offs). I am definitely a bit tech heavy due to how much Nvidia has exploded (yay bitcoin!).
I just received a chunk of inherited securities which for some reason were dumped into about 3 dozen funds of which I am not familiar (lots of alphabet soup). For whatever reason my dad's financial guy had him do that. The sum is less than 5% of our net but I will have to realign those for our goals.
Other holdings that are not stock:
We also own our home for which our equity is about 15% of the total value of the above market investments and the estimated value is about 30%
Both my dad and my grandpa died this winter, so we own 50% (split with my sibling) of their two homes and cash holdings which will be roughly 15% of our current holdings. No, I don't want to rent these out there is too much emotional intersection with those and they aren't good prospects anyway due to age and locale.
Figuring out what to do with my inheritance is a priority, though my intent is to pass those funds directly on to my descendants and to keep them segregated (but grow them). I had always hoped my parents would spend every dime but they died youngish.
But as in my OP I want to reassess overall strategy with our post FI excess income going forward.